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Chili cookoff, cars highlight city fair

Sunday, July 12, 2009
By Micky Pietkiewicz

From left, County Mayor Eugene Ray greets Terry Hagler and Mark Featherstone, who came to the fair to serve their homemade ice cream.
(T-G Photo by Micky Pietkiewicz) [Order this photo]

People from all across the country came to Shelbyville for the Historic Uptown City Fair Saturday. The Tennessee State Chili Cook-Off Championship brought couples from Mississippi and California to Shelbyville to sweat it out for the state chili cook-off title.

James and Sylvia Rasey traveled all the way from California to participate in the chili cook-off. James, who is retired from the Navy, travels around the country to participate in both salsa and chili cook-offs. The couple entered both their red and green chili.

"Life's good," James, who won the Oklahoma State salsa championship, said.

Mike and Wanda Dearing chop vegetables in preparation for the Tennessee State chili cook-off championship.
(T-G Photo by Micky Pietkiewicz)
[Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]
Mike and Wanda Dearing, of Newton, Miss., also came to Shelbyville for the chili cook-off. Wanda Dearing, the current Louisiana state chili verde champion, said she will soon compete in the World Championship.

Past visits present

Antique and restored cars were lined around the square for people to see as they walked from booth to booth. Kevin and Pam Barton, of Murfreesboro, brought their 1974 MGB Roadster. The red convertible is one of only 105 roadsters that came with an overdrive transmission.

"Every evening after work we take a ride through the country," said Pam. The couple has driven the car to California and Las Vegas.

Donald Street brought his blue 1970 Ford 100 Sport Custom for the car show.

"It's in its original condition. I've had it painted once and had a new set of tires put on but that's it," he said.

Michael Holt brought his 1966 black Chevrolet.

"I've owned it for 20 years and about 3 years ago I started restoring it. I just recently finished the restoration," said Holt.

Goodies galore

Numerous vendors were set up around the square.

Terry Hagler, Mark Featherstone and Paxton Morton were set up and ready to serve their homemade coconut ice cream, even though they were without their "Hit 'n Miss" ice cream machine.

Curtis Malone, owner of Malone's Custom B-B-Q, began to grill chicken, hot dogs and bologna early Saturday morning.

Art and Jackie Harold set up a booth with all handcrafted items made by Art. The two have a shop in Columbia, where Art constructs decorative items for the home.

There were booths that sold purses, jewelry, gourmet barbecue sauce and salsa, handmade soap, food, and just about anything a shopper might be looking for.

Comments

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Have not seen an article by this person before..who is this? Are they new?

-- Posted by bedfordcounty08 on Sun, Jul 12, 2009, at 4:09 AM

I know she was an intern last year or the year before . . . she attended SCHS and was on student council there and is the daughter of HMS principal Bill Pietkiewicz and teacher Miriam Pietkiewicz I think.

-- Posted by jaxspike on Sun, Jul 12, 2009, at 10:14 AM

She is the intern this summer and is doing a wonderful job.

-- Posted by tamb on Sun, Jul 12, 2009, at 11:00 AM

She writes well, Good article.

I think the Fair was pretty good. I saw a great turn out and Calvin did a very good job at organizing it and making it is a family safe environment.

-- Posted by Evil Monkey on Sun, Jul 12, 2009, at 11:48 AM

Well written Article.

-- Posted by Brett Favre on Sun, Jul 12, 2009, at 11:51 AM

The fair was pretty good I suppose, but if it hadn't been for someone else telling me about it I wouldn't have known about it until Wednesday's article (if I had read that). The T-G has an "Event Calendar" link, but there is NOTHING in there. Events like this might possibly get more attendance if the local paper were to cover it a bit more in advance.

-- Posted by Thom on Sun, Jul 12, 2009, at 4:20 PM

I agree. The Times-Gazette must be commended for covering events like the fair, but like most other events they need ADVANCE coverage to help get butts there. Not just a blurb here and there but information in the paper and on the website. I know there are a lot of events coming up but there is no place on the website to find that info. The calendar never has events like this listed.

-- Posted by bedfordcounty08 on Sun, Jul 12, 2009, at 6:11 PM

It takes a lot of work and time to put on events like this Calvin deserve a big thanks. I to wish the Times Gazette would post more info in the paper and on their website. I seen it as a cover story of about a half of a day then it was buried you really had to dig in the website to find it and I never saw it listed in the calender of events. The Times-Gazette even had a booth at the event you think they would have advertised it a little more at the least. Most people I talked to didnt even know it was going on.

-- Posted by johnnyreb on Mon, Jul 13, 2009, at 7:59 AM

I found that this event, like others the town has, are a bit unorganized. Waiting to hear the winners of the chilli cookoff & the car show took forever, no one had anything ready at the times they said things were going to happen. I was also disappointed in the car show...there were cars that didn't even have a division. Most car shows that people attend, give out awards for ALL classes of cars. This one only did just a few. My dad had a car that didn't even list a class for him. I hope that in the future, this event is planned out & executed a bit better. Glad to see though, that Shelbyville is starting to do things. I just hope more people come out to support their town!

-- Posted by iansgirl427 on Mon, Jul 13, 2009, at 12:17 PM

I suppose there aren't any comments from the T-G regarding the lack of coverage? You guys comment on everything else, why not respond to the comments here?

-- Posted by Thom on Tue, Jul 14, 2009, at 9:19 PM

Response by John Carney:

I wrote a response and decided that it sounded defensive and never posted it.

We did preview stories on the event, two that I could find on the front page and one in our special issue prior to the Fourth of July. We're generally quite supportive of this type of event, and as someone pointed out we even had a booth there.

As far as the calendar issue, we in the newsroom didn't realize it wasn't in the calendar until a day or two before the event. We commented on that fact once we noticed it. I don't recall that the organizers specifically asked us to put it in the calendar -- which is generally how things get there -- but we'd have probably done so anyway if we'd have noticed it sooner.

The web calendar was my fault. I've been interim editor the past two and a half weeks, which has increased my workload, and for the first week I let the web calendar fall through the cracks. At one point, there was nothing on it, city fair or otherwise.

We're an easy target in circumstances like this -- which I suppose we should take as a compliment. I apologize if we could have done better. But I'm not sure the newspaper was the issue here. We supported the event and gave it advance coverage.

The other lesson is that during this time of year, with so many events going on, it's important for anyone organizing an event to be pro-active in working with the media to get their message out.